15. The Other Side of the Screen
The Other Side of the Screen
The small break room was washed in cold fluorescent light.
A white laminate table stood in the center.
In one corner, murky coffee dripped into a glass pot, filling the room with the smell of burnt beans and reheated food.
Beyond the glass wall facing the hallway, a few coworkers passed by, their outlines distorted in the dull reflection.
Markus sat at the corner of the table.
In front of him was the lunch box Nadja had prepared that morning. Slices of dark bread, neatly layered cold cuts, cheese, a small portion of salad, and a napkin folded into a perfect square. Clean. Orderly. Typical Nadja.
He chewed a piece of bread and felt the salty taste of the meat slowly mix with the cold layer of cheese in his mouth.
Nothing special. Just a normal lunch at the office.
But that very normality made the corner of Markus’s mouth lift softly. A few months ago, he had thought little things like this might disappear from their marriage.
A neatly packed lunch box. A precisely folded napkin. A meal Nadja made for him before he left the house.
But since his last business trip, those intimate gestures had suddenly returned.
He pulled out his phone and started a video call. He wanted to see her now. He wanted to hold the lunch box up to the camera like an idiot and tell her he was eating. That it tasted good.
Nadja’s name appeared on the screen. The call rang once. Twice. Three times. A little too long.
Markus propped the phone against his water glass and adjusted the angle so the lunch box was clearly visible.
With one finger, he nudged the plastic container into the center of the frame and unconsciously smoothed the edge of the napkin, as though Nadja might somehow notice the detail through the screen.
The call connected.
The image shook briefly and violently. The camera showed the kitchen ceiling from a strangely low angle, swept unsteadily past a strip of yellowish light, then was hastily repositioned.
Nadja appeared on the display.
Only her upper body, from the chest up, was visible.
The light in their kitchen at home fell warm and yellow across her, much softer than the sterile glow in the break room.
Behind her, Markus could make out part of the familiar kitchen cabinet, the edge of the dining table, and the dull reflection in the rain-streaked window.
“Markus?”
“Am I interrupting something?”
“No…” She swallowed audibly. “It’s fine. I’m eating too.”
Markus ignored the tiny hesitation. He lifted the lunch box toward the camera with a smile. “I’m having lunch. This turned out really good. I’ve almost eaten everything.”
He waited for her to laugh. Nadja did smile, but the smile came late and looked strained.
Her face was deeply flushed. A few damp strands of hair clung to her forehead. Her shoulders were rigid, her back far too straight, as if holding that posture were costing her everything.
Markus narrowed his eyes and looked more closely at the screen. “You’re really red. Everything okay?”
Nadja quickly raised an open beer bottle to her chin. Condensation covered the cold glass. The movement looked unsteady, but she immediately pulled herself together.
“I got caught in the rain while I was shopping. I’m just having a beer to warm up.”
“Beer warms you up?” He laughed softly.
“Here in Rosenbrück? Probably.” She laughed too, but the corner of her mouth twitched.
“Don’t drink too much if you haven’t eaten anything yet.”
“I know.”
Markus leaned closer to the screen. From the cool office break room, the warm light behind Nadja made their kitchen at home look strangely intimate. He wanted to be there now. Even if only for a few minutes.
“The Frankfurt contract is as good as done,” he said. He couldn’t hide the rising pride in his voice. “Don’t wait for me with dinner tonight. The team wants to go out for a drink and celebrate the deal a little.” He paused, then added more quietly: “I know it’s pretty last-minute.”
Nadja blinked rapidly. “That’s good.” Her voice sounded strangely low. “You should definitely go.”
“Mr. Keller? Sorry, can I ask you something for a second?”
Markus turned his head. Leonie Brandt stood beside the table.
The new employee, maybe in her early twenties, wearing a smooth silk blouse, a tablet pressed against her chest. She leaned forward slightly so she wouldn’t block the light, but in doing so her loose hair fell over her shoulder and partly into the frame of the phone propped against the water glass.
“I’m not sure whether we’re supposed to use the final version of these numbers for the presentation or the old one.”
“Yeah, give me a second.”
Markus looked back at the screen. “This is Leonie, our new colleague. I’m showing her a few things for the documents.”
Leonie looked up and smiled brightly into the screen. “Hello, Mrs. Keller. I’m so sorry for barging in like this.”
“Hello.”
Nadja’s voice was ice-cold and clipped.
“I’m only borrowing your husband for a minute,” Leonie said with a charming smile.
Markus pointed to a line on the tablet and quickly explained what she needed to watch for.
Leonie leaned over attentively, nodded in understanding, then stepped out of frame again.
Her light, sweet perfume lingered for another moment in the break room, completely foreign among the burnt coffee and cold food.
“Sorry,” Markus said when he turned back to the screen. “She just started, so there are still a few things I have to show her.”
“You’re training her directly?”
“Yeah, for now. She’s new, but she catches on pretty fast.”
“Young.”
The corner of Nadja’s mouth lifted in a pale, almost mocking smile.
“I think she’s twenty-two. I’m not exactly sure.” He smiled innocently.
Nadja didn’t smile back. A brief silence opened between the two screens.
Markus had actually wanted to tell her more about Frankfurt, but at that exact moment he remembered the banking notification that had flashed across his screen earlier when he was getting into the elevator.
“Oh, by the way, was everything okay when you went shopping earlier? The banking app showed me a declined card payment.”
The image shifted slightly. For one second, Nadja lowered her gaze, almost as though she were collapsing inward.
“The card was declined.”
“Damn.” Markus frowned. “The secondary Visa?”
“Yes.”
Markus went silent for a moment. His features tightened as though he had suddenly remembered something he should have taken care of days ago.
“It might be because of last month’s statement,” he said awkwardly. “I thought the payment had gone through without any problems.”
Nadja stared at him through the screen. “You thought.”
Markus swallowed. “I’m really sorry. The bank probably blocked the supplementary card temporarily as a precaution.” He ran a hand over his face, making the dark circles under his eyes more pronounced. “How did you pay for the groceries, then?”
The instant he asked the question, Markus saw Nadja’s face change dramatically. Deep red heat rushed into her cheeks and spread all the way to her ears.
A heavy pause followed.
“Karl paid.”
Markus immediately stopped chewing. His fingers tapped restlessly against the laminate tabletop. “Karl Seifert?”
Nadja gave a short nod.
Markus stared at the screen. “Why was he even there?”
Nadja raised the beer bottle again and took a hurried sip. The level barely dropped, but she swallowed hard, her throat moving visibly.
“It was raining really hard. He was heading out in his car, saw me downstairs in the hallway, and just gave me a ride. The grocery store isn’t exactly close in weather like that.”
Markus said nothing. A very specific, cold discomfort rolled through his chest.
“Nice of him,” Markus said slowly, weighing every word.
The pause afterward lasted much longer than it should have.
“Almost too nice.”
Nadja’s face darkened even further. “Yeah… he’s… a little…” She bit painfully at her lower lip.
“A little what?”
“A little weird. He stares a lot. But I can handle it. Don’t worry.”
Markus pulled his eyebrows tightly together. The uneasy feeling in his stomach grew as he watched his wife bite her lip, watched her face practically glow, heard the tremor in her answer.
It felt like standing much too far from a door left ajar. He knew something filthy lay behind it — and he could not simply walk over and push it open.
“Besides, it really was pouring,” Nadja suddenly said much too quickly, as though trying to fill his probing silence. “Without his car, I honestly wouldn’t have known how to get all the heavy stuff home.”
Markus exhaled heavily. He was stuck here, trapped between cheap office coffee and the still-unfinished Frankfurt contracts. The small pride he had felt moments earlier collapsed, replaced by a stale sense of helplessness.
He couldn’t even afford to be angry or jealous when his own wife stood at a checkout unable to pay and some old stranger had to step in and help her.
“Keep your distance from him anyway,” he said sharply.
“I know.”
Nadja drew her shoulders slightly upward. For a moment, her body seemed to fold inward. Then she abruptly straightened again.
Markus looked more closely. One of her hands had disappeared completely below the frame. The other gripped the edge of the table so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
Her eyes no longer looked directly into the camera. Again and again, her gaze darted nervously downward, as though something were happening there, then snapped guiltily back to the screen.
“Are you absolutely sure everything’s okay?”
“Yes.”
She nodded far too quickly.
A panting breath escaped her without warning. Short. Sharp. Like a moan suppressed at the last possible second.
“Nadja?”
“I… I just choked on the beer.”
She tried to smile. Her right shoulder trembled uncontrollably. The beer bottle in her hand struck the tabletop with a dull clack.
Markus stared at the distorted smile on the screen.
Something was very wrong. But it was too subtle.
It was there in the unnatural flush of her face.
In the rigid way she sat. In the painful delay between his question and her answer.
And it was there in the name Karl Seifert, which had suddenly become far too casually present in Markus’s own kitchen.
“Markus, three o’clock! Quick meeting!” a coworker called from the hallway.
Markus turned his head and gave a brief nod. “I’ll be right there.”
He looked back at the display. “I have to go in. Like I said, I’ll be late tonight. Eat without me.”
“Ahh… yeah…”
Nadja suddenly let out a high moan, her eyes flying wide. She immediately shut her mouth and forced the next words out in an extremely hoarse voice. “Go… go ahead.”
Her voice broke in the middle of the sentence.
Markus frowned in alarm. “Nadja, what’s wrong, you—”
The image suddenly jerked violently. Nadja bent sharply forward. The phone slipped from its support. The screen hit the table with a dull thud and landed sideways.
Markus could see only a shaky fragment of her sweat-damp forehead, a few wildly disheveled strands of hair, one edge of the kitchen ceiling, and the flickering yellow light.
A deep, moaning breath came loudly through the speaker. Heavy. Trembling. Then abruptly cut off.
“Nadja?!” Markus jumped to his feet. The chair behind him scraped harshly across the break-room tiles.
The image was jerked upright again.
Nadja’s face was now extremely close to the camera. Burning red. Her eyes damp and strangely glassy. She stared directly at him, but her gaze seemed to pass straight through him.
“I have to…” She swallowed hard, her chest rising and falling frantically. “Turn off the stove. I… I’ll call you later.”
“Wait—”
He didn’t get any farther. The image vanished, and the display showed that the call had ended.
Markus remained standing completely still for several seconds.
Around him, the coffee machine beeped monotonously because the water tank was empty. Out in the hallway, coworkers called to one another with laughter as they headed toward the conference room.
In the lunch box in front of him lay half a slice of dark bread and a sad remainder of cucumber salad. The napkin Nadja had folded so perfectly now had one corner completely crumpled by his restless fingers.
He slowly slipped the phone into his pants pocket and snapped the lid onto the lunch box. Then he picked up the plastic container and walked mechanically toward the sink in the break room.
The salty taste of cold cuts and dark bread his wife had prepared so carefully that morning still lingered on his lips.
But in his mind, the image of her flushed, moaning face, her broken breathing, and the name Karl Seifert kept sliding over one another— somewhere in a murky gray zone between a cold rainstorm, an embarrassingly declined credit card, and the warm, intimate kitchen in his own home.
Markus didn’t know exactly what was gathering there, dark and heavy in his chest.
It wasn’t tangible enough yet to call real suspicion. Not sharp enough to qualify as jealousy. But the creeping unease inside him drilled deep into his thoughts and found no way out.